This research addresses the issue of heteroxexual relationships in general and sexual relationships in particular in cross-cultural perspective. The investigation draws upon, and attempts to synthesize, theoretical positions from clinical psychology, social anthropology and sociobiologyas they inform such areas as marriage and the family, sexuality, and male and female sex roles. Utilizing ethnographic sources from the Human Relations Area Files supplemented by other ethnographic material, it has proceeded to test a variety of hypotheses concerning both the patterning ofmale-female relationships within and across cultures and the antecedents of variations in these patterns from one society to the next. The focus of the cause-and-effect hypotheses is the influence of child-rearing patterns and family structure upon cultural values and individual behavior in the area of heterosexual attachment and behavior. The theoretical background of these hypotheses stems from the thinking of traditional psychoanalytic theory; object-relations theory, including John Bowlby, Harry Stack Sullivan and R>W>D> Fairbairn; psychological anthropological theory, and expecially the work of John W. M Whiting; and ethological studies, especially those concerned with the biological foundations of attachment. Methodology is based upon cross-cultural techniques as outlined by Whiting and Child, Whiting, and Goethals and Whiting in previous publications. data analysis in this p@oject has followed the procedures developed or explicated by David Armour and Arthur Couchh(Data-Text ; Norman Nie, Dale Bent, and C. Hadlai Hull (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences); Roger Shepard, A. Kimball Romney and Sara Beth Nerlove(Multidimensional Scaling); Douglas Oliver (Clustering Analysis); and Janet Elashoff and Chrles Dunbar (Measures of Association).